The Belfast Agreement’s principle of consent should be sacrosanct to all Unionists – Swann

“Arlene Foster’s comments on the Belfast Agreement are strategically shortsighted. The DUP may have been happy to corrupt the 1998 agreement for their owns ends at St Andrews, but I cannot believe the DUP Leader has been so careless as to throw it open in such a haphazard way which is of no benefit to unionism.

“The reality is that the principle of consent is what binds us to the United Kingdom, it is the best settlement for unionists and should be sacrosanct. We should be looking to build on this principle and ultimately remove the changes made at St Andrews to finally do away with the sectarian politics which continues to plague us to this day.

“And it is abject hypocrisy for Mary Lou McDonald and Sinn Fein to criticise the comments. They were complicit in destroying the partnership model of government established by the Belfast Agreement.

“I’m also not surprised to see the DUP are now trying to sidle up beside Boris Johnson in case the wind starts to blow in a different direction. It’s obvious that they are trying to hedge their bets. They can't get away from the fact that they are the people propping up the Government leading the negotiations on Brexit. If the final deal is a bad deal for Northern Ireland, people will rightly ask what exactly were they doing?”